Google Results Have Stopped Sending Customers
Service-based businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to rely on organic search for customer acquisition. They've historically depended on high-intent keywords but are now facing challenges with Google's search results and the perceived ineffectiveness of social media, hindering their growth and requiring them to re-evaluate their marketing strategies.
SOURCES (60)
“accept it as top-of-funnel and start building the second channel now. your own evidence already answers this: both revenue jumps came from working existing users, not the incoming traffic. the intent mismatch is structural, not a landing page you can tune away. the real question…”
“I’d compare the full-funnel numbers before deciding whether to shift more budget.”
A good media buying strategy should leave room for testing new sources.
“If the economics work, adding another channel could make the overall mix more resilient.”
“nice breakdown, especially the ai visibility tracking part — that's something most seo guides skip. one thing that helped me early on was getting listed in a few startup directories that actually pass dofollow links and get indexed fast, since waiting on google to find a new site takes forever. launchpact.io/startups does that without a review queue if you're still collecting backlinks.”
“the split you're describing is the right one and i can't produce it, which is its own answer. i have clicks per page in search console and payers in revenuecat, and nothing joining the two. first touch landing page isn't stored against the account, partly because there is no account. the app works without registration, so the field i'd join on doesn't exist. fixable, but not retroactively. one thing that argues against the mixed channel read though: the pages are structurally”
“it doesn't seem to change anything as the other metrics are still calculated on engaged views It will actually help if you have a brand deal”
“From a dev, and from what I've seen in my own & others' projects (I've worked on many many sites), congrats on the project but - I think you've got SEO backwards. I don't think Google cares about keyword as much as it used to (ofc a very different title+meta won't rank); Google has been trying to understand articles from an EEAT + helpfulness perspective for a while now. Approaches like yours are exactly what Google cracks down on. Thoughts: - "will be used to ge”
“Is organic search dead or is this just a founder-led selling phase ? I was shocked to know only 13% comes from google lol :) submitted by /u/penwonder [link] [comments]”
“Fair callout - you definitely aren't getting them through Google Search or random Twitter blasts on a fresh domain. SEO is 6 months away. "Organic" in week 3 doesn't mean passive algorithm traffic; it means high-friction, unscalable hustle: The conversion math: If you solve a hyper-specific, bleeding-neck problem, a tight 1-page smoke test converts at 15-25%. You only need ~200 targeted visitors, not 5000. Where the 200 visitors come from (manual legwork): - The interview loop”
“We charge usage based, but average is 200$/month We got 100 customers with a mix between cold outreach, paid ads and network effects”
“The Reddit-shows-zero-but-Direct-is-probably-Reddit point is something more people need to internalize. Mobile app link clicks drop the referrer almost every time. I've seen the same thing with Telegram links, Discord links, basically any native app that opens a webview or hands off to the system browser. Your free tools SEO play is quietly the best part of this breakdown. 15 small utilities, each ranking for its own longtail query, compounding over time with zero ongoing effort. That's”
“you've made my case and then drawn the opposite conclusion from it. if most of your traffic is casual viewers, then the conversion rate you're worried about is already meaningless and there's nothing to fix. that's fine. but it also means you have no evidence about what creators do when they land on your page, because barely any have. so what does paid buy you. it buys you the first clean read you've ever had on the actual funnel. that's worth something, but call it what”
“I’m starting to question whether we’re just publishing content for the sake of publishing content. We’ve been putting out around 20–25 articles a month for the last few months. Most are properly optimized, internally linked, have decent word counts, and we’re targeting keywords that actually have some search volume. But traffic is barely moving. Some articles get indexed and sit somewhere around positions 30–60. A few make it to page 2 and then completely stall. Meanwhile, some old articles we h”
“Why not just use Influencer Marketing while supplement that growth channel with another growth channel?”
“The only thing they are good for is a backlink or to have your company name mentioned on another site so there are references to your company online. The only thing they hold any real value is if your target market is early stage founders, developers, or indie hackers. If you are selling mid market or enterprise B2B there's no person in procurement keeping an eye out for the newest tool that they can buy.”
“If you spend 10k on ads and get revenue of 10k from that you will still be losing money, probably quite quickly because of cost of orders + business.”
““SEO work is paying off” in just 24? I’ve seen it happen when the AdSense RPM jumps because Google finally starts matching your traffic to higher-paying queries, not because of some magic shortcut. That’s a real pattern, and it usually takes longer than people expect.”
I learned this after paying for clicks that hit a leaky onboarding flow.
“Wanted to share some real data instead of another "I made $10K in a month" post with no receipts. This is Google Search Console, last 3 months, for a free multi-tool web app I've been building and maintaining solo: 328K clicks 6.21M impressions 5.3% average CTR 18.7 average position That last number is the one I want to be honest about - average position 18.7 means most of this traffic is still coming from page 2 of Google. This isn't a "I dominated search" post. It&#”
“your avg session is almost 5 min which means people ARE using it. they just dont see enough value to pay after the free runs. you need person-level analytics not just pageviews. been running KISSmetrics on my stuff and its way less overwhelming than Mixpanel was”
“I've spent money on Google and YouTube. At best, Google ADs just allowed other Companies to find me... So they could Sell/Spam me. YouTube ADs, also a joke. There must be a YT farm where people click a video and watch 10 secs, to make money. On Etsy I sell a Flight Radar display (Vector 28CN) that has great 30 day sales. But that is without any ADs, so I am thinking about IG as a trial. Just think I am wasting my money.”
“This is the part that never makes it into the "how I got my first users" posts. Everyone shares the traffic spike, nobody shares the retention curve right after. Feels like the real signal is what % of that first wave came back on their own without a nudge, that tells you more than the initial pickup ever does.”
“My SEO got pummeled the last six weeks or so. Total clicks to my pages dropped significantly with Google's anti-spam updates. Then SEO kind of recovered for no reason and though I'm getting fewer total clicks and impressions now, engagement is higher and daily users of my products have increased. Clicks coming from AI searches to my pages have converted much better than regular search. So I think that is the key.”
“SEO is now impacted heavily by Google AI Overviews tbh, so it’s not the same “slow win” playbook as it used to be If interested, I can send you some related research, dropped a deep dive on the state of SEO recently”
“SEO may be slower, but it can still work when you target high intent problems instead of generic keywords. Combine that with communities like Reddit and some targeted outreach, and you have a much stronger acquisition mx.”
“Spot on analysis. When paid acquisition and SEO get saturated, the only lever left is high-intent organic and radical clarity on the landing page. If visitors have to read blocks of text to understand a complex tool, bounce rates kill the funnel. What’s left is showing the product in action instantly — using 60fps motion UI and visual loops to cut the cognitive load before they even scroll.”
“I am thinking a lot about user acquisition these days and the more research I read, the uglier it becomes • Google Ads = cost per lead is too high • SEO = 35% fewer clicks after AI, declining, and slow • AEO = still an experiment; no proven model that works 100% • X / Telegram / YouTube Ads = you reach mostly free users + expensive • KOLs = expensive + declining trust + fake engagement • Reddit = hates all ad formats • LinkedIn = again, very expensive • Automated outreach = low reply rate The qu”
“You need an analyst to explore your user engagement rate, help set up proper channels for user acquisition, understand site traffic. But of course, you require Consent mode for more advanced analysis. Your key take away here is to try make your successes measurable and repeatable with the help on an analyst, instead of randomly throwing darts 🎯 and hoping one sticks.”
“I agree in some places this is a real shift, but it might not the threat it looks like. Fewer people using Google Maps to navigate doesn't mean Google is losing ground as a review source. Most searches for a business still start on Google itself with a straight search and the local three-pack. Or increasingly an AI Overview pulling from the same review data. As for moving reviews around, definitely don't do that. Every site treats its reviews as its own, and copying a Google review's”
“Yeah, this is the killer one - I've watched founders celebrate "direct" spikes thinking they're building brand recall when it's really just dark social, email clicks, and paid traffic with stripped referrers. Once you actually dig into the analytics and cross-reference with your paid spend and newsletter sends, half that "direct" bucket disappears.”
“When we launched Valycode we had a rough channel strategy. Some SEO groundwork, maybe some paid ads down the line, product hunt at some point. Standard playbook. What actually drove the majority of our signups was Reddit posts that weren't designed to drive signups. They were just honest writeups about things we were figuring out while building. Problems we hadn't solved, observations about user behaviour, questions we were genuinely asking ourselves. The posts that tried hardest to be u”
“Worth pulling the two numbers apart before you decide. Organic traffic costs you nothing, so a poor conversion rate on it is not a problem, it is just what free curiosity looks like. Paid traffic has a floor under it. Take your expected cost per click, divide by the conversion rate you think cold traffic would hit, and that is your CAC. Hold it against what a customer is worth to you over twelve months. If it does not clear, better targeting will not save it. Your own post answers half of this a”
“I would urge you to pay an experienced paid-ads consultant. Yes, you're also paying for consultancy but I assure you that whatever you're paying them for their time, you'll save twice-over in conversions, because it'll be appropriately targeted and monitored.”
“That placement grind is what kills consistency, most people quit after week two once the novelty wears off”
“SEO and brand building are a long-term game but cheaper, while paid advertising is quite but expensive, so that's really the trade-off you need to keep in mind. Since you already have the products, I would use a combination: Micro influencers- can go a long way in the beginning, not too expensive, and create organic content for you. But I would not pay them a lot/pay only with the free product. Important for this: you need a product that would catch their audience's eyes. What's spec”
“paid ads won't fix this and will probably look worse. you'd be buying the same curiosity traffic with a cost attached to it. the number that decides it: conversion rate on your non-viral days against viral days. if baseline converts fine and the spikes drag the average down, nothing is broken. you have a denominator problem and your dashboard is lying to you about it. split those two before you spend anything. if baseline is normal, the fix is capturing viral traffic into email instead o”
“Go check out 10 similar businesses doing well on social, look for their top performing posts in the last 4-6 months. Use them as inspo and test content designed in your own unique voice.”
“Yes. Do a search for CRO (conversion rate optimization). I haven't used any so I can't recommend any.”
“Always remember in an expanding market all you need to do is participate. A $10 product sold to 100 people monthly is already 1k/ month, if you can get a subscription service going you could be hitting 10k/month in the first year before costs. This post probably already has that many views, you could totally do it.”
“Yeah, that's exactly the issue I'm trying to figure out. My entire SaaS is built around creators and clippers who want to create short form content for social media, whether they're starting a new page or already running an existing one. The platform helps them create highly engaging simulation style videos that can attract a broad audience. The problem is that because the videos themselves are designed to attract almost anyone, a lot of normal casual viewers also end up visiting the”
“Organic traffic that converts poorly usually means either the wrong audience is finding you, or the messaging isn't matching what they expect. Before you spend on ads, figure out which one. Are the people landing on you actually the ones who need this? If yes, watch where they drop off and why. Paid ads won't fix a funnel problem, they'll just amplify it and burn money faster.”
“I don't much of the reviews yet. Is there some services who help with landing page optimisation?”
“I'm running a relatively new business related to video creation and social media automation. Most of my traffic and signups currently come from my own growth on social media. Whenever one of my videos goes viral, I see a significant increase in traffic and signups. The problem is that a large portion of this traffic consists of low-intent users. A lot of people sign up simply because they saw a viral video and got curious, but they don't necessarily have a strong intention to pay for the”
“warm outreach. You cannot rank in AI Search or SEO in 2 weeks with a new website. But, it took us almost 5-6 months to get some meaningful traffic.”
“For paid search, it is the main campaign type for driving conversions and revenue. All about making sure the shopping feed is custom and the best it can be. Success starts and ends with your shopping feed.”
“Because I've seen it myself. That's how Google works now. The search results you see could be completely different from what others see, especially when you're logged in.”
“Exactly. Google may show your different results based on your IP, network, and other signals they gather.”
“Nice. Can you expand on how you did this 24k programmmic seo pages ? Also what do you mean by data stories ? Are u posting fun facts on reddit related to the data or what ?”
“What’s up, Been 2.5 months and seo has been a great channel for inbound. So far only have 2 paid users but honestly it’s pretty good for not doing any advertising. Looking to ramp up advertising and also target seo to higher ticket companies. Right now the blogs are bringing in a lot more freebies for every paying person. Those who pay are usually agencies, the freebies are just one off people who want to get free leads from my platform. Any tips on targeting SEO to the right people? Or is it no”
Ok ill look into that and make sure I get it all set up properly. Thank you
“My advice would be to stop running ads completely for right now because that amount is not going to bring you any results. I totally get that content is an annoying part of owning a business these days. However, in your case, it is probably more valuable to take the time to make the content and get your product out there to put money down the ad drain. If your website is not great or frustrating to use, that's probably your biggest problem. People look at a website and relate that to the qua”
“That is exactly what I’m saying, truss the process, plant the seeds and watch it grow. A lot of people see the success of “ influencers” and think crap I want this. But nobody wants to put in the time and let it slowly compound. Just keep refreshing it weekly or bi weekly check the analytics, adjust or pivot your seo stradegy and watch the traffic slowly rush in. Thank you for your contribution to this!”
“I’m working with a site that needs to reach around 500 genuine visits/clicks per day within the next two weeks because the site is being prepared for sale. Organic rankings are improving, but I’m trying to understand whether there are realistic ways to supplement organic traffic with referral traffic during this short window. I’ve done the usual SEO work and understand that simply building more backlinks is unlikely to produce 500 referral visits/day in two weeks. I’m therefore interested in str”